Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories » (Collection)

A genre-bending author who can move from science-fiction to mysteries, Walter Mosley is perhaps best-known -- and loved -- for his 1940s and 50s noir crime novels starring the cool, complex detective Easy Rawlins.

Walter Mosley's bestselling and award-winning novels -- from Gone Fishin' to Devil in a Blue Dress, named one of the "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association -- have endeared him to legions of readers from a U.S. president to everyday people who can't get enough of Easy Rawlins.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries received a bonus when Washington Square recently reissued in trade paper the six novels that preceded the latest one, Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002). Each reprint contained an original short story featuring Easy. Now, those stories and a seventh never before published have been gathered together in a volume that's something of a patchwork but still vintage Mosley. In his mid-forties, with a makeshift but tight family and a respectable and responsible job, Easy no longer needs to depend on trading favors to earn a living. But these stories reflect a more restless and reckless man-one who finds himself being drawn to the street life he thought he had left behind. Energized and unsettled by rumors that the dangerous and unpredictable Raymond Alexander, better known as Mouse, might still be alive, Easy undertakes to determine the truth. That extended search also finds Easy undertaking a number of jobs that recall his forte of being a black man more capable than most of dealing with the volatile intersection of blacks and whites in Los Angeles. In short order he investigates arson, murder, a missing person and other crimes. The linked stories form an extended search not only for Mouse but also for answers as Easy confronts the familiar demons of mid-life crisis. Easy occupies center stage, surrounded by a stellar cast of both new and familiar characters, while the spirit of Mouse hovers enticingly nearby. (Jan.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.